Filtering by Tag: learning

I haven’t been writing in the last month because I’ve been busy plowing through the first half of the orchestral season at Chautauqua, which has been 3 programs a week, while simultaneously working on my personal training certification through the National Academy of Sports Medicine. It’s been…a lot! If I had to summarize the month, and this year in general, it would be that our brain and nervous system are truly phenomenal in the act of music making and daily living. As I work with more varied clients in pilates, I’ve also been seeing more folks dealing with neurological conditions, which has led to me reading more about the brain, studying the brain’s role in movement, learning and coordination, and more. I’m by no means an expert, but here are some of the things I’ve gleaned this year that have changed the way I think about the brain in music.

The brain and nervous system are in constant dialogue. You have many different kinds of sense receptors in your body, including those discern temperature, pressure (mechanoreceptors), light, and chemicals. Those sensory neurons (afferent) take the stimuli to the CNS and brain while motor neurons (efferent) direct movement. While playing an instrument, your brain is instructing your body (via nerve impulses) to execute complex movements while also being aware of what is happening moment by moment and adjusting.

Playing an instrument is a really complex task for the brain. It involves motor (movement) components, coordination and interpretation of music (visual and cerebellum), auditory feedback, as well as emotional responses. There was a great Ted Ed video (see above) a few years ago about music impacting the brain in action.

Reading music is different (and similar) than reading words. I’ve been looking into how we process music visually and how it differs from interpreting written words, and I’ve observed that there are some similarities in processing, but it seems to affect different aspects of the brain. In reading some of Oliver Sack’s writing, I’ve noticed that after an injury, someone may have lost the ability to read words, but retained the ability to read music, or vice versa, suggesting that they are different functions, or at least stored in different locations in the brain.

When we read music, analyze the material, and play the notes, our brain is doing a complex series of movements, whereas reading a book doesn’t necessarily trigger a motor impulse and movement response. In music, we are reading the notes, bowing, breath indicators, dynamics, text (if song), and sending appropriate motor messages out to our body to execute the task. I’ve noticed that the first few times I learn a new piece, such as an orchestral work, it takes me a day or two to recognize the patterns: the rhythms, the fingerings, the intervals, but by the performance a few days later, my brain has mostly acclimated to the new material.

When we play in an ensemble, we are handling a ton of different stimuli, and determining which is relevant at any given moment. We are observing loud sounds of winds and percussion, lighting, following other players, and managing a lot of information. Although most performers are used to playing in ensembles, looking at how we actually do it is pretty amazing.

We often take our visual system for granted- not just our eyes, but how our brain processes visual information. In working with clients after a concussion this year, I’ve realized how much visual information our brain collects in ensembles and how versatile our visual system has to be to manage it. Let’s say you’re playing viola on the third stand- you’re toggling between looking at sheet music in front of you, the principal further in front of you, the concertmaster to your right, and the conductor in the center. At any moment, your eyes are flitting between these different targets, which may be under different quality and intensity of light, while processing the sounds of the ensemble in conjunction with your task of interpreting the sheet music in front of you. Your visual system is changing direction and distance constantly.

Performing a familiar piece of music is charged with memory. There was a terrific documentary called Alive Inside that came out a few years ago about music for those with alzheimers and dementia, which addressed how music could elicit surprising responses from patients. While I’m no specialist in psychology, I can feel my own version of that when I play certain pieces. I first learned Tchaikovsky’s fourth symphony in 8th grade in my first full orchestra experience. I’ve played it many times with different orchestras since, and each time, I have memories of the other places I’ve played, whom I played it with, how I felt about it, and where I was in my life at the time. For performers, music becomes embedded with experiences, feelings, and memories from when we first heard things as a child or teenager through adulthood. (And your amazing hippocampus plays a role in that too!)

Sight reading music is an incredibly complex task. Dr Noa Kageyama wrote a nice blog about this a while ago, but I continue to be fascinated at how my own brain can process information on the spot quickly. In orchestras, you are often given a day’s notice to step in and substitute, which means I have to learn music incredibly quickly or sight read it on the spot. In the initial pass, my brain is trying to identify some patterns by which to cling to (scales, rhythms, arpeggios, pitch relationships). If we work on the piece more, aspects of the music will be stored to short term memory and the subsequent passes will be easier as more connections are drawn.

Music that I haven’t played in years is often still well organized in my long term storage in my brain (and body). Excerpts or solos that I haven’t prepared in a long time are still “in there” so to speak, and it’s amazing, at least to me. I’ve taken breaks from auditions, only to surprise myself at the clarity with which my body and brain can coordinate the repertoire, despite the lack of recent practice on that piece. The same is true for pieces that were formally memorized and performed.

Your brain changes itself, and that’s amazing. Neuroplasticity is a more recent concept, believe it or not, and your brain’s ability to change is part of the reason learning new music is possible. Let’s define neuroplasticity though- it’s the brain’s ability to change itself in response to stimuli, training, etc. I currently have a lovely 76 year old violin student, who occasionally doubts that she can learn new material. Yet, in 6 months of weekly lessons, she has indeed made progress technically which suggests to me (and her!) that neuroplasticity is very real. Her brain is still able to make new connections and change previous patterns of playing violin which may not have been advantageous. The same can be true for a musician trying to change a habitual pattern or improving a specific skill, whether it be in music, movement, or life. For more on music and neuroplasticity, read this article by Dr. Jon Lieff.

The late Oliver Sacks wrote prolifically about the brain in both music and non music circumstances.

While this is by no means a conclusive list of what is happening in your brain while making music, these are just some of the things that are interesting me these days. Here are some of the resources worth checking out for more brain related content:

And if you’re not ready to spring for a huge heavy duty reading adventure, I highly recommend checking out podcasts to get more bite sized topic adventures. Some of the podcasts I’ve explored include the Functional Neurology Podcast, the Liberated Body, and the Broken Brain podcast. You can also just look up these authors and see which interviews they’ve done.

Let’s look at two words that are often used interchangeably but mean different things: proprioception and kinesthesia. According to the American Heritage Science Dictionary, proprioception is “The unconscious perception of movement and spatial orientation arising from stimuli within the body.” In other words, it’s the awareness of body position and location.

Kinesthesia is the “Sense perception of movement, the muscular sense,” meaning an awareness of how movement is performed. Proprioception is the result of sensory input throughout the body (skin, fascia, muscle, joint receptors), which then sends feedback to the spinal cord and brain.

Kinesthesia, however, is more behavioral in origin and your body is more actively involved in assessing movement patterns and making adjustments. In yoga and other movement disciplines, we need both our proprioceptive sense and kinesthetic abilities to execute tasks. In addition, the brain exhibits neuroplasticity, meaning that changes in nerves and synapses can occur, new movement skills can be acquired at any time, and there is potential for new neural connections throughout life, regardless of age.

As humans, we are often creatures of habit, often preferring repetition and predictability to novelty, from driving the same way every day to work, to performing the same set of sequenced asanas in a class or at home. Although there is still incredible benefit to be reaped from repetition and movement, creativity is what drives the brain, kinesthetic sense, and motor learning. With every new set of movement concepts or skills, there is a timeline of growth and acquisition that can be seen in the psychological model of the conscious competence matrix, used in many different modalities of learning:

Unconscious Incompetence: The student does not know or understand how to do something, and therefore does not know their own incompetence.

Conscious Incompetence: The student does not understand how to do something, but sees their own deficits and is eager to learn.

Conscious Competence: Student understands how to do something but is refining the movement and skills needed.

Unconscious competence: Student is able to execute the skill with minimal effort and ease.

Let’s apply this to a movement skill that I am still refining: handstands. When I first tried a handstand, I was convinced that I could not do one (having not done them in my youth), and had no idea where to start, thus the unconscious incompetence phase. I later started to build the strength needed in the shoulders, although my kick attempts were clumsy (conscious incompetence). A few years later, I was able to kick up to the wall, albeit not always gracefully, and able to refine my kinesthetic mastery of the movement mechanics, thus conscious competence. I think I’m still somewhere in the conscious competence phase in regards to handstanding, since it’s not yet second nature, but we’ve all seen people pike and float into handstand with no problem, thus unconscious competence. This same matrix can be applied to musical training, whether with a musical technique or concept or a selection of music.

Let’s tie this all back to yoga asanas – after a certain point, many of the traditional yoga asanas (vinyasa, downward dog, tadasana, warrior poses, etc.) become very familiar, thus unconscious competence. We may have a remembered rote sense of what poses usually “feel” like, and thus replicate a similar felt experience each time. We may no longer think about the way we execute the pose, and may be doing the poses on autopilot, with little felt sense of proprioception or kinesthesia. The same is true with musicians with warmups- I am absolutely guilty of doing the same warmup every day, and just sort of going through the motions. How can we challenge our self learning and assessments with our instruments and habits, even after playing an instrument for 15, 20, 25 years?

The solution? Make poses and movement new again and think out of the box. For movement, my favorite way to do this is with pilates and Yoga Tune Up®, as they have both been challenging for the brain and body in bilateral movements, new pose orientations, and joint explorations. For music, I invite myself to warmup by improvising- if I'm working on an excerpt, I have to remind myself to approach it as if it were new, whether that be through new fingerings and bowings, playing the accompaniment parts in the orchestra, playing along with recordings, or simply challenging myself to learn new repertoire, etudes, and concepts. Novelty challenges the brain and the body, and helps to keep us on the lifelong path of learning and growth.